| Formerly | Kennedy Miller Productions (1978–2009) |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1978 |
| Founders | Byron Kennedy George Miller |
| Headquarters | Australia |
Key people | George Miller Doug Mitchell Bill Miller |
| Products | Motion pictures, television, video games |
| Services | Film production, television production, video game production |
Kennedy Miller Mitchell (known before 2009 as Kennedy Miller) [1] is an Australian film, television and video game production house in Potts Point, Sydney, that has been producing television and film since 1978. It is responsible for some of Australia's best-known and most successful films, including the four Mad Max films, the two Babe films, and the two Happy Feet films.
Kennedy Miller Mitchell is one of Australia's oldest existing film production companies, and the most successful internationally. Its principals are George Miller and Doug Mitchell who has been a financial partner in the enterprise since 1981 and is George Miller's producing partner.
Many of the films are directed by the co-founder, George Miller, though he sometimes takes an organisational role and prefers to use someone else to direct, as with Babe, which was directed by Chris Noonan. [2]
The company's most recent project was the fourth Mad Max film, titled Mad Max: Fury Road . After being "in development hell for 25 years", the film was released on 15 May 2015, to critical acclaim but financial underperformance. [3] [4]
Byron Kennedy, who was a film school lecturer at the time, and George Miller first met at a summer film school in Australia in 1971. They began making short features and experimental work, including Violence in the Cinema, Part 1, which Byron produced, photographed and edited, and which won two Australian Film Institute (AFI) awards. [5]
In 1978, Kennedy and Miller formed the production company Kennedy Miller Productions, which produced their first feature film, Mad Max . The success of the film allowed them to establish Hollywood contacts, and work in the United States as well as in Australia. [6]
In July 1983, Byron Kennedy was killed when the helicopter he was piloting crashed. Miller's first reaction was to back away from filmmaking without Kennedy's input, but he decided to continue, and created a sizeable body of TV productions during the 1980s and 1990s, [6] among them the six-part series The Dismissal (1983), the seven-part series Bodyline (1984), the six-part series The Cowra Breakout (1984), the ten-part series Vietnam (1987) with Nicole Kidman, the three-part series Bangkok Hilton (1989), and the five-part series The Dirtwater Dynasty (1989). [7]
In 1994, the company took court action against Australian television broadcaster Nine Network over a contracted creative rights dispute. Kennedy Miller received a payout of $8.1 million. [8]
In 1995, the company had a major success with the film Babe , the story of a pig who thinks it is a sheepdog. The film used cutting-edge animal animatronic and visual effects created by Jim Henson's Creature Shop, John Cox's Creature Workshop and Rhythm and Hues. Along with visual effects supervisor Scott E. Anderson, they were awarded the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. Babe was the second largest grossing film at the Australian box office after Crocodile Dundee (1986). [9]
In 2006, the company had another big success with Happy Feet , which topped the US box office. [2]
In 2007, the company formed a partnership with Australian production and media services outfit the Omnilab Media Group, to launch a digital production company. [10]
In 2009, the company was renamed Kennedy Miller Mitchell. [1]
In 2011, the company made a strategic move towards video game creation, and plans to make games for its own films. The company has taken on staff from two Australian game developers that have collapsed, Krome Studios and Team Bondi. [1]
In early 2013, the company closed down their video game studio, KMM Interactive Entertainment, and ceased production on Whore of the Orient , which was going to be the next title from the devs behind the game L.A. Noire . After the studio closed down, the remaining devs formed an indie studio called Intuitive Game Studios, which would act as a successor to both Team Bondi and the KMM studio.
Academy Award nominations
The Witches of Eastwick (1987)
Lorenzo's Oil (1992)
Babe (1995)
Babe: Pig in the City (1998)
Happy Feet (2006)
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
George Miller is an Australian filmmaker, best known for his Mad Max franchise, whose second installment, Mad Max 2, and fourth, Fury Road, have been hailed two of the greatest action films of all time, Fury Road winning six Academy Awards. Miller is very diverse in genre and style as he also directed the biographical medical drama Lorenzo's Oil, the dark fantasy The Witches of Eastwick, and the Academy Award-winning animated film Happy Feet, produced the family-friendly fantasy adventure Babe and directed the sequel Babe: Pig in the City.
Mad Max is a 1979 Australian dystopian action film directed by George Miller, who co-wrote the screenplay with James McCausland, based on a story by Miller and Byron Kennedy. Mel Gibson stars as "Mad" Max Rockatansky, a police officer turned vigilante in a dystopian near-future Australia in the midst of societal collapse. Joanne Samuel, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Steve Bisley, Tim Burns and Roger Ward also appear in supporting roles.
Happy Feet is a 2006 animated jukebox musical comedy film directed and produced by George Miller and written by Miller, John Collee, Judy Morris, and Warren Coleman. It stars the voices of Elijah Wood, Robin Williams, Brittany Murphy, Hugh Jackman, Nicole Kidman, Hugo Weaving, Anthony LaPaglia, Magda Szubanski and Steve Irwin. An international co-production between the United States and Australia, the film was produced at Sydney-based visual effects and animation studio Animal Logic for Warner Bros. Pictures, Village Roadshow Pictures, and Kingdom Feature Productions. It is the first animated film produced by Kennedy Miller and Animal Logic. Set in the cold land of Antarctica, the film follows Mumble (Wood), an emperor penguin who is able to tap dance brilliantly despite his lacking the ability to sing the heartsong to attract a soul mate. After being continuously ridiculed and rejected by peers and his own father (Jackman), Mumble departs on a journey to learn what is causing the local fish population to decline — and to find himself along the way.
Animal Logic is an Australian animation and visual effects digital studio based at Disney Studios in Sydney, New South Wales in Australia, Vancouver in Canada, and Rideback Ranch in Los Angeles, California. Established in 1991, Animal Logic has produced visual effects and animation for feature films such as the Academy Award-winning Happy Feet, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole, Walking with Dinosaurs 3D,The Lego Movie andPeter Rabbit. The company was also recognised for its work as lead visual effects vendor on Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby, which won Outstanding Achievement in Visual Effects at the 3rd AACTA Awards ceremony. In 2018, Peter Rabbit was presented with a range of accolades, including the AACTA Award for Best Visual Effects or Animation, and Australian Production Design Guild Awards (APDG) in Visual Effects Design and Drawing, Concept Illustration & Concept Models for Screen. Most recently, the company has produced work for the Warner Animation Group's The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part and Marvel Studios' Captain Marvel. It is a subsidiary of Netflix.
Byron Eric Kennedy was an Australian film producer known for co-creating the Mad Max series of films with George Miller.
Bill Miller is a Sydney-based feature film producer.
The Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS), formerly Australian Film and Television School, is Australia's national screen arts and broadcast school. The school is a Commonwealth Government statutory authority.
Hugh Keays-Byrne was a British-Australian actor. Between 1968 and 1972 he was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. He played the antagonist in two films from the Mad Max franchise: Toecutter in Mad Max, and Immortan Joe in Mad Max: Fury Road.
Chris Noonan is an Australian filmmaker and actor. He is best known for the family film Babe (1995), for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director and Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Judith Ann Morris is an Australian character actress, as well as a film director and screenwriter, well known for the variety of roles she played in 58 different television shows and films, starting her career as a child actress and appearing on screen until 1999, since then she has worked on film writing and directing, most recently for co-writing and co-directing a musical epic about the life of penguins in Antarctica which became Happy Feet, Australia's largest animated film project to date.
Team Bondi Pty. Limited was an Australian video game developer based in Sydney. The company was founded by creative director Brendan McNamara, formerly of Team Soho, in 2003. The studio's first and only title, the action-adventure game L.A. Noire, was announced in July 2005. The development was originally funded and overseen by Sony Computer Entertainment Australia, although all publishing duties later switched hands to Rockstar Games. L.A. Noire was released by Rockstar Games, initially for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in May 2011, to both commercial and critical success. Despite the positive reception, Team Bondi faced several allegations of poor working conditions by several former employees, causing controversy for the studio and leading Rockstar Games to part ways with Team Bondi following L.A. Noire's release. As a result of this, the developer saw itself unable to sign a publishing deal for a new game that was being written by McNamara.
Mad Max is a media franchise created by George Miller and Byron Kennedy. It centers on a series of post-apocalyptic and dystopian action films. The franchise began in 1979 with Mad Max, and was followed by three sequels: Mad Max 2, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985) and Mad Max: Fury Road (2015); Miller directed or co-directed all four films. Mel Gibson portrayed the titular character Max Rockatansky in the first three films, while Tom Hardy portrayed the character in Mad Max: Fury Road.
Mad Max: Fury Road is a 2015 Australian post-apocalyptic action film co-written, co-produced, and directed by George Miller. Miller collaborated with Brendan McCarthy and Nico Lathouris on the screenplay. The fourth instalment in the Mad Max franchise, it was produced by Village Roadshow Pictures, RatPac-Dune Entertainment and Kennedy Miller Mitchell, and distributed by Roadshow Entertainment in Australia and by Warner Bros. Pictures internationally. The film stars Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron, with Nicholas Hoult, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Riley Keough, Zoë Kravitz, Abbey Lee, and Courtney Eaton in supporting roles. Set in a post-apocalyptic desert wasteland where petrol and water are scarce commodities, Fury Road follows Max Rockatansky (Hardy), who joins forces with Imperator Furiosa (Theron) against cult leader Immortan Joe (Keays-Byrne) and his army, leading to a lengthy road battle.
Doug Mitchell is a film producer.
Margaret Sixel is an Australian and South African film editor. She is best known for her work as editor on her husband George Miller's films, including Babe: Pig in the City (1998), Happy Feet (2006), and Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). For Fury Road, she won the Academy Award for Best Film Editing and the BAFTA Award for Best Editing.
Colin Gibson is an Australian production designer. He is known for his collaborations with George Miller, including Babe, Babe 2: Pig in the City, Happy Feet, Happy Feet Two, and Mad Max: Fury Road, the latter of which resulted in winning the Academy Award for Best Production Design and an AACTA Award. Gibson's other work includes The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, for which he shared a BAFTA award nomination with Owen Paterson.
Lisa Thompson is an Australian set decorator and Academy Award winner.
Andrew Jackson is an English Australian visual effects supervisor. He has worked on various feature films, including 300 (2006), Knowing (2009), Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), Dunkirk (2017), The King (2019), Tenet (2020), and Oppenheimer (2023).
The following is a list of unproduced George Miller projects in roughly chronological order. During a career that has spanned over 40 years, George Miller has worked on projects which never progressed beyond the pre-production stage under his direction. A few of the projects were made after he had left production.
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